Worker Rights

On November 3-4, 2026, Canva CEO Melanie Perkins told staff the company would restructure, affecting 1,271 employees (about 22% of its global workforce) through layoffs, role changes, and relocation requests to centralized hubs including Sydney. Perkins called it 'the hardest moment' in the company's 13-year history, citing growth slowing for the first time in a decade after Canva cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20% in August 2026, and cited new technology changing how people create and use its products. Hybrid staff will be required in-office 2-3 days per week starting January 2027.

For the first time in Samsung Electronics' 57-year history, the company's two co-CEOs sent separate, division-specific anniversary messages instead of a single unified message: Jun Young-hyun to the chip-making Device Solutions (DS) division and Roh Tae-moon to the Device eXperience (DX) smartphone/TV division. The split followed record Q3 2026 results in which DS earned 106.5 trillion won while DX posted an 800 billion won loss, its second straight quarterly loss. DS employees expect bonuses of roughly 750 million won each versus about 6 million won in treasury shares for DX employees, a roughly 125:1 gap. The Samsung Electronics Labor Union (SELU) called the separate messaging 'a divide-and-conquer move that entrenches the pay gap' and said it weakens organizational communication; Samsung said performance differences between divisions made a unified message impractical.

Internal documents obtained during British Columbia Labour Relations Board hearings revealed Amazon used an AI-powered 'Atlas' risk-scoring tool to track unionization risk at Canadian warehouses, including its Delta, BC facility (YVR2, scored a labour-risk level of 169 with 52 'high severity events') and a Vancouver-area site (YVR3, 47 'high severity events'). Follow-up reporting confirmed the system, now operating under a different name, tracks union activity at Amazon facilities globally, including in the UK. The Delta warehouse had been certified as unionized by the BC Labour Board in July 2025, and the board separately ruled Amazon violated multiple provincial labour laws during the ensuing contract dispute. Amazon disputed characterizing the tool as individual worker surveillance, saying it relies on aggregated site-level data to identify where support is needed.

Donghaeng Union chairman Son Yong-ho attempted to approach Chairman Lee Jae-yong's vehicle at Samsung Electronics' Suwon campus on October 16, 2026 to request direct dialogue over a compensation dispute between the profitable semiconductor (DS) division and the struggling consumer electronics (DX) division. After a 30-minute standoff, security personnel restrained Son; the union says he was pushed against a wall and fell, striking his head, and was hospitalized with bruising, dizziness, concussion-like symptoms, and temporary memory loss. The union held a press conference on October 19, 2026 demanding a personal apology from Lee, an investigation into the security personnel involved, and direct dialogue with employees. Samsung declined to comment.

In October 2026 Ubisoft imposed a mandatory 5-day-per-week in-office policy across its studios. Workers said the company gave inadequate justification for ending remote-work arrangements. Employees at Ubisoft Milan staged a six-day strike over the policy, and more than 750 employees at Ubisoft Montreal signed a petition opposing the mandatory in-office requirement. The policy landed alongside a separate wave of layoffs and studio closures (previously recorded), compounding reported low morale, with workers describing feeling 'devalued and alienated.'

Montreal-based Lightspeed Commerce announced the week of October 13, 2026 that it was cutting 250 roles through a combination of layoffs and leaving vacancies unfilled, without specifying the split. Employees posted layoff announcements affecting content and sales roles on LinkedIn. CEO Dax Dasilva had said on a July 2026 earnings call that AI had reduced staffing needs, particularly in product development. The cuts follow roughly 100 earlier 2026 job cuts from a workforce of about 2,000, part of a multi-year cost-cutting push amid a stock decline from a 2021 peak of CAD $159 to about CAD $15, and the company's April 2026 divestiture of its US hospitality business at a steep loss versus its 2020 purchase price.

On October 7, 2026, Nokia opened cooperation (change) negotiations to eliminate 253 positions across its Espoo, Tampere, and Oulu sites in Finland, about 3.7% of its roughly 6,800-strong Finnish workforce. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring program expected to incur about EUR800 million in charges in 2026, targeting EUR800M-1.2B in savings by year-end, with the company citing a need to boost competitiveness and fund investment in AI, data center, and defense-related growth areas.

Three former SK Hynix semiconductor employees filed industrial accident claims with South Korea's Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service, including a fatal breast cancer case (Yoon Young-mi, 30 years at the Icheon plant, died April 2026) and a fatal brain tumor case. Labor group SHARPS (Banolim) alleged SK Hynix continued using nickel compounds and cyclohexanone -- chemicals the company had listed as banned or that competitor Samsung has already prohibited -- citing the company's own environmental filings, and noted five chemical accidents at SK Hynix plants in 2026. SK Hynix said a 2016 independent committee found no work-related link and that it has provided support regardless of accident-recognition status; the compensation agency said an epidemiological review could take about a year.

After its Amsterdam works council withheld consent on May 22, 2026 to a proposed mandatory two-day-per-week office attendance policy (replacing a non-binding 40%-of-time guidance under which average attendance had fallen to 27%), Booking.com filed for court-ordered substitute consent on June 30, 2026. At an October 6, 2026 Amsterdam court hearing, Booking.com argued competitive pressure, including from AI, required more in-person collaboration; the works council objected that the company had not shown the policy would achieve its goals, had not tried less restrictive alternatives, and offered no compensating measures. The proposed policy includes disciplinary measures up to termination for repeated non-compliance. The judge signaled sympathy for Booking.com's position at the hearing; a ruling was expected in late October 2026.

France's Court of Cassation on October 6, 2026 upheld the 2022 criminal conviction of former Deliveroo France executives for 'travail dissimule' (concealed/undeclared work), finding couriers between 2015-2017 had a 'permanent legal subordination relationship' with the company that made them employees despite being classified as independent contractors. Deliveroo France was fined the maximum €375,000, ordered to pay €50,000 to five trade unions and €1,200-3,000 each to 100+ affected couriers, and French tax authority URSSAF separately demanded €9.7 million in unpaid social security contributions. It is the first criminal conviction of a food-delivery platform in France for labor law violations. Deliveroo said it 'categorically contests' the ruling.

Ericsson Italia had initiated a collective redundancy procedure affecting 131 employees at its Genoa (Erzelli) technology and research hub. After weeks of worker protests, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni personally telephoned Ericsson Italia CEO Andrea Missori, and on October 5, 2026 the company withdrew the redundancy procedure at a meeting convened by Industry Minister Adolfo Urso. Ericsson agreed instead to a consensual scheme of voluntary exits with incentives over a 48-month window and redeployment opportunities at other Italian and international Ericsson sites, with a monitoring table established to discuss the Genoa site's future industrial role.

After wage talks broke down at Naver Z (Naver's metaverse subsidiary, maker of Zepeto) with management proposing a salary freeze and cutting incentives to one-tenth of prior levels, the Naver Union formally demanded integrated bargaining covering all 15 Naver affiliated corporations, arguing Naver exercises real control over affiliates through full ownership stakes, shared administration, and personnel authority. Naver responded that it is not the practical employer of affiliate workers. On October 2, 2026 the union filed what it said was the IT industry's first legal action under the amended Trade Union Act ('Yellow Envelope Act') with the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Relations Commission, seeking a ruling that Naver must join the bargaining as a joint employer.

As Flipkart's IPO remained repeatedly delayed, the company's July 2026 ESOP buyback program (at a $38B valuation) was offered only to current employees, excluding former staff who collectively hold roughly half of the ~$4 billion in outstanding vested options. On October 1, 2026, at least eight former senior executives (including ex-Myntra CEO Mukesh Bansal, former CFO Sanjay Baweja, and former CTOs Amod Malviya and Ravi Garikipati) wrote to Walmart's board seeking equal liquidity treatment. By October 10-11, over 1,000 former employees from Flipkart, Myntra, Cleartrip, Shopsy, Supermoney and ANS Commerce had submitted a collective appeal, part of a campaign aiming to mobilize an estimated 20,000-30,000 former staff, demanding the company delink option liquidity from the IPO timeline and extend post-exit exercise windows.

Brazil's Tribunal Superior do Trabalho (Superior Labor Court) ruled, in a decision reported September 29, 2026, that iFood can be held subsidiarily liable for the labor debts of a motorcycle courier (motoboy) employed by logistics partner SIS Moto Entregas Express Servicos from March 2019 to November 2020. The worker, who had no formal employment contract and worked 11am-to-midnight shifts without breaks under threat of platform blocking, sued after SIS Moto failed to pay owed wages. The court found that because iFood contracts logistics firms whose core activity is providing delivery labor to iFood, this constitutes illegal outsourcing (terceirizacao) rather than a purely commercial relationship, applying STF Theme 725 and TST Sumula 331. iFood's defense -- that its relationship with SIS Moto was purely commercial intermediation -- was rejected; the rapporteur dissented, arguing the platform-logistics relationship is commercial, not an employment arrangement. The ruling conflicts with an April 13, 2026 decision by the TST's Fifth Panel finding iFood NOT liable in a similar case, leaving the court's position on platform liability for outsourced delivery labor unsettled.

Naver Z, operator of the Zepeto metaverse platform and majority-owned by Naver, saw about 70% of union members join a full one-day walkout on September 23, 2026 after two rounds of Labor Relations Commission mediation failed. Management cited a roughly 49.4 billion won ($36.1M) 2025 operating loss in refusing a proposed 5.3% wage increase, instead freezing wages; the union noted Naver affiliates had frozen wages only once before, in 2009, when executive pay rose 71% the same year. The union criticized CEO Kim Chang-wook for lack of transparency and threatened a five-day strike starting mid-October if talks stalled, amid a broader push by Naver's union for unified bargaining across 16 affiliated companies.

Kakao's labor union (Kakao branch of the Korean Chemical, Food and Allied Industry Workers' Union) protested outside the Seoul High Court on September 23, 2026 against the company's planned corporate split into Kakao X (a surviving entity for investment and portfolio management, absorbing Kakao Investment) and Kakao AI (a new entity for AI services). The union said the restructuring plan lacked sufficient guarantees for employment succession and working conditions for affected staff. A shareholder campaign to block the merger by gathering 20% opposition fell short at roughly 2%, allowing management to proceed via board resolution; the union has since shifted to a public-opinion campaign.

In early September 2026, Sea Limited sent Singapore-based employees an internal memo stating that starting with October 2026 payroll, MariBank (Sea's own digital bank) would be the mandatory salary-crediting bank, offering a S$100 Shopee voucher to those who updated their bank details by September 17. Employment lawyers noted Singapore employers cannot legally require staff to receive salary through a specific bank absent a contractual provision, and Singapore's Ministry of Manpower said employers must pay salaries in full and on time and should engage employees on payment options rather than mandate them. Sea later said employees with personal circumstances could seek exceptions via HR, but the initial messaging created a coercive impression and raised conflict-of-interest concerns given the policy funneled staff finances to a Sea-owned financial product.

A bench trial brought by California's Civil Rights Department against Tesla over systemic racial discrimination at its Fremont factory opened September 21, 2026 in Alameda County Superior Court, running through October 30, 2026. The case, covering more than 6,000 Black workers with no damages cap, followed a nearly three-year state investigation into hundreds of worker complaints. Trial testimony alleged supervisors and managers regularly used racial slurs, workers called the factory a 'plantation' and referred to Black colleagues as 'slaves,' swastikas and racist graffiti appeared in common areas, Black workers earned about $1,533/month less than white workers (June 2018-June 2024), were funneled into the hardest and lowest-paid jobs, and were disciplined more harshly while passed over for promotion. The suit alleges management ignored years of documented complaints and that some workers fired for misconduct were later rehired as contractors. Tesla says it does not tolerate discrimination and fires employees who engage in misconduct. A related EEOC suit over the same underlying harassment allegations is in mediation.

Following a June 2026 fluorine gas leak at its Cheongju plant, South Korean labor authorities conducted intensive nationwide safety inspections across 27 semiconductor manufacturers, finding 338 total violations. SK Hynix accounted for roughly half: 119 violations at its Cheongju campus (35.2% of all violations found industry-wide) and 48 at Icheon. Regulators issued fines (32 million won at Cheongju, 27.7 million won at Icheon), referred Cheongju safety-rule breaches to prosecutors for potential criminal prosecution, revoked a subcontracting approval at Icheon, and issued a work-suspension order. Violations included missing warning labels, failure to post safety data sheets, and non-compliance with required procedures for subcontracted operations.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published a report demanding suspension of the Stargate UAE AI campus -- a multi-gigawatt data center project involving G42 alongside OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and SoftBank -- pending an independent human rights impact assessment. The report and accompanying regional press coverage cited the absence of credible independent oversight of the facility under the UAE's broad 2021 cybercrimes law, G42's documented history of surveillance-linked ventures (ToTok, DarkMatter), and reliance on low-wage migrant labor without documented labor protections for construction and operations staff.